Add Custom Extensions To DashClock Lock Screen Widget For Android

Recently, we wrote about DashClock Widget – the brainchild of leading Google team member Roman Nurik – and the widget has already proved to be one of the most impressive and widely acknowledged Android app releases of the year. DashClock Widget basically looks to exploit true potential of Android lockscreen widgets announced in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean by presenting users with a plethora of information and notifications pertaining to various apps on the very same screen, which would otherwise mostly be accessed only by unlocking the device and navigating to the relevant apps. The widget’s own dedicated extensions aside, it’s the extensible nature of DashClock Widget that has done it a world of good. Almost every other day, a brand new third-party extension for the widget hits the Play Store, introducing us to yet another one of the countless possibilities offered by this simple little widget. Dashclock Custom Extension by Dominik Gross is one of the most interesting extensions we’ve seen for the widget so far. It lets you add a few customizable extensions to the widget that you can personalize according to your needs, complete with various user-defined actions.

Like all other third-party extensions for DashClock Widget, Dashclock Custom Extension integrates smoothly with the widget. However, the main difference offered by this particular extension is that upon installation, it adds three customizable extensions to the list of DashClock extensions, letting you further assign custom actions to each of them according to your preferences.

Using Dashclock Custom Extension, you can set a custom title and brief description for each of the three extensions, and more importantly, assign each of them one of the following actions:

All of these custom actions are pretty much self-explanatory, and don’t require much of an effort to set up. For launching an app or shortcut, you’re presented with a list of all the available apps or shortcuts; for custom websites, you’re offered a blank URL text field; to call someone, you’ll have to manually input the contact number, and the Edit Note option can be availed to edit the custom text you’ve entered into the description part of the extension.

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Adding these custom extensions to the DashClock lockscreen widget is quite simple as well. From the widget’s main configuration screen, tap the ‘Add Another Extension’ option and select any of the three custom extension that you should see in the list. Once the extension is added, you can start customizing it by hitting the settings button. This way, you can add a maximum of three custom extensions to the lockscreen widget, and set their order of appearance as desired. The icon of each extension will automatically be determined based on the chosen action.

According to the developer, the limit of a maximum of three custom extensions is just temporary, since the official API doesn’t allow adding more options for now. However, once this restriction is lifted, you’ll be able to play around with as many custom extensions as you want.

Needless to say, each DashClock Widget extension is meant to operate in combination with the widget itself, and Dashclock Custom Extension is no exception in this regard. Therefore, you should make sure that you have DashClock Widget installed on your Android 4.2 or higher device in order to play around with all the personalization tweaks Dashclock Custom Extension has on offer. You can grab the extension from Google Play Store using the link provided below.